Knoxville,TN

Last I checked in I was sitting at the little truck stop in Gordonsville,VA waiting on a load. Around 1100 I finally get a load. I have to be 171 miles to Martinsburg,WV in 3 hours for a 1400 (1500 local time) appointment. They said it was only 117 miles, but I don't know what map or roads they were taking. And I wasn't about to take some of those back roads in VA after every other road having a sign that says trucks over 30ft not advised. So I haul ass and write everything down, walk Smokey and we are off. Had to make one pit stop along the way. I was in and out of that rest area in about 3 minutes flat. Back on the road and I pull up to the place and send our arrive message at 1358 hrs. WHEW! Granted I was going 65 the whole way if not faster down the hills. But I was empty so my fuel mileage was still over 7.5 mpg which is good.

I get loaded and by this time it is 1500 my time. J wakes up, after only about 6 hours sleep, and I head around to get the paperwork and we are off. First thing is to hit a scale. Paperwork says 41K but it doesn't feel that heavy. I head south on I-81 and cross back over to VA and hit the first exit which is 323 because there is a Flying J there. Scale and I am 31,500 on the drives and 32,540 on the trailer. Cool. I am legal. This load is going to CA and we have till Friday to get there so we just decide to park at the J for the night and I will head out first thing in the morning. We go grab a bite to eat and then head back to the truck to watch the show. We got there at a really good time and I found a great parking spot that I could straight line back into. By the time we came out from eating it was a frenzy of truckers trying to find a place to park for the night. There is not a lot of space to maneuver in the aisles when trying to back so it was a cluster. I kept waiting to see someone wreck but no suck luck. I was in the mood to see a good fight, but it didn't happen. So I gave up and went to bed.

I roll out of bed around 0330 this morning and J and I head in to take a shower. He took a nap earlier that evening, but stayed up to stay on his schedule. So he woke me up and we went inside. Came back out and hit the road. The day before I had talked to TruckingTiger and they were on their way our direction. We made plans to meet up for lunch and as it happens, I picked the perfect spot. He pulled into the TA that I picked about 3-4 minutes before I did. Great timing! So we had lunch with him and his girfriend. She is riding with him for now and will be soon starting training and then they will team. It was really nice to finally meet her! Hopefully we will be able to catch up with them again soon and have lunch again. I will admit that I cheated on the diet today and had a burger, but that is the only thing I have cheated on in two weeks, so not bad.

After having lunch we headed out and I finished driving us into Knoxville. I stopped at the TA to fuel and was going to keep going but J was awake and decided to go ahead and take over. We ended up having to stop at the next TA which is 6 miles down the road so I could scan something in for payroll that didn't get in with the other stuff I scanned earlier. The first TA had the scanning stuff but the printer was out so it couldn't print a receipt. I want a receipt showing it was sent in so we went to the next one.

Funny Smokey story. Today I stopped at a rest area and took him to go to the bathroom. He still squats to pee unless it is a tree or a bush then he will raise his leg. So he squats 3 times on the grass (he really had to go) pee'd on 2 trees then he went poop. When he went poop, he was backed up against the tree and was pooping on the tree. And his ass was so close to the tree that it was smushing the poop into cow pies when it was coming out instead of dropping on the ground. When I noticed, because you don't want to stare when they are taking care of their business, I cracked up and then tugged him away from the tree so he would have some room. Of course that gave him stage fright and we had to walk around 5 more minutes for him to find a suitable place to finish. It was quite amusing at the time.

That is what our day has been like. I still wonder what happened to the guy with the load of cantelopes that fell. Guess I will just have to wonder....